Kids at Bremerton’s
brand new $4.5 million Boys & Girls Club
have found themselves
without daily gym space
ever since the auxiliary
gymnasium at the old
East High School was
closed due to roof damage shortly after the club
opened.
The larger gym is used
by a host of other youth
groups and club members have had only sporadic access to that space.
Youth
Wellness
Campus
Executive
Direc tor
Patr icia
Hennessy said this week
that she is working with
the Bremerton School
District, the Boys & Girls
Club and other stakeholders to find a solution. She says her organization’s top priority is
raising about $500,000
to re-roof the entire
40,000-square-foot

Only half of city
employees use
electronic system
BY KEVAN MOORE
KMOORE@SOUNDPUBLISHING.COM

Kevan Moore/staff photo

Bremerton Boys & Girls Club members have limited access to the old East High gym on the
Youth Wellness Campus because other youth groups already use the space.
structure, covering both
the auxiliary and larger
gyms.
The Youth Wellness
Campus signed a lease
with the school district

in February effectively
making the organization
the landlord of the entire
seven-acre project area.
That lease supersedes
a lease that the Boys &

Girls Club had in place
guaranteeing them use of
the auxiliary gym, not to
mention the storm damage that made the smallSEE GYM, A13

She wants to mend a mother’s broken heart
BY LESLIE KELLY
LKELLY@SOUNDPUBLISHING.COM

Kellie Terrebonne is a
matchmaker of a different kind.
Her work isn’t about
pairing up couples wanting to find love. Instead,
her work is about reuniting people with their
most treasured lost
things. And that’s how
she happened on to
Donna Huntwork.
“I have this habit,”
Terrebonne said. “I like
to help people.”
That’s why she reads
the “Lost and Found”
ads in newspapers and
on Craigslist. She finds
happiness in matching
up people who have lost
things with people who
have found things. It
was an ad on Craigslist
that caught her attention
about a month ago.
“It said something
about looking for a lost

Leslie Kelly/staff photo

Kellie Terrebonne is searching Dyes Inlet for a lost rock.
moonstone rock shaped
like a heart,” Terrebonne
said. “So I emailed the
person and that’s when
I found out the whole
story.”
The rock belonged to
Donna Huntwork’s son
John. John’s body was
recovered last August in
Dyes Inlet near Tracyton.
He went missing on July

27, 2013, and his family
and friends think he accidentally drowned. John
liked to walk the beach
in the area off Elizabeth
Avenue, near his home in
Bremerton. One theory
is that John was caught
in an undertow causing
his death.
His mother said John
had a heart-shaped rock

he’d always carry with
him. Because his body
was recovered without
his pants, she put the ad
on Craigslist hoping that
his black pants will wash
ashore and inside them,
in the pocket, will be the
moonstone rock which
he loved so much.
“I know it’s a real long
shot,” Donna said. “But I
wanted to try.”
She thinks John kicked
off his pants and shoes,
trying to stay above
the current before he
drowned. She thinks the
rock will most likely be
in his pant’s pocket. She
put out the call, hoping
that beachcombers who
are out at low tides will
keep an eye out.
After hearing the story
of the rock, Terrebonne
said she had to go searching for it herself. She
began charting low tides
SEE TERREBONNE, A13

Only about half of
the City of Bremerton’s
employees are using an
electronic timekeeping
system first introduced
six years ago.
That’s one of several
findings released in a
new report by Bremerton
Auditor Gary Nystul.
Some of his other findings show that various
city departments use over
25 different paper forms
to process pay; there are
some supervisors who
are approving their own
attendance; and the only
person who prepares the
entire city payroll does
not have a fully trained
backup.
“For the March 15,
2013 payroll, 161 employees were using electronic
time keeping and 158
were still manual,” Nystul
wrote in his report. “The
major departments not
yet on electronic time
keeping are police, fire
and parks.”
The city has just over
308 employees with salaries and wages that, not
including benefits, total
some $24,996,428. That’s
down from 2009 when
there were just over 369
employees at a cost of
$26,528,877.
“The city does not have
a written or electronic
payroll manual or compilation of standard written instructions available
for guiding departments
and employees in the
preparation and processing of pay,” Nystul wrote.

“Employees who maintain
the payroll in the various
departments change from
time to time. Email directives and information are
issued periodically by HR
and Finance but are not
retained in any document
or electronic file accessible to the various departments.”
In addition, employees are mailed an earnings statement every two
weeks and there are six
city employees who still
receive paper checks for
payment.
During last week’s study
session, council member
Eric Younger wondered
why the statements can’t
be emailed and why there
were some workers still
cashing paper checks.
“So, we have six holdouts here who want a
paper check and we
cannot mandate that?”
Younger asked.
The answer was that
all new employees are
required to sign up for
direct deposit and the
“holdouts” are protected by prior bargaining
agreements.
Nystul’s report says
that some departments
use paper daily labor
report forms to capture
the individual employee’s
daily activity. In some
departments, the hours
are then entered manually into an excel payroll worksheet which is
printed, approved with
a manual signature and
then delivered to the payroll specialist. The payroll specialist must reenter the data into the
payroll system. In other
departments the hours
are entered by the department timekeeper from
the paper forms into the
SEE TIMEKEEPING, A13